I'm just blown away by the irony of a nation that ran an international network of secret prisons and tortures people lecturing another country on morality.
Given that the British lower court found, and the British upper court confirmed, that they would be in the UK as well? Yes, unless you think the UK is part of Sweden. What part of "breaking the terms of consent", "pinning someone down to try to force sex", "having sex with a sleeping person", and "rubbing genitalia against an unwilling participant" do you think are only applicable to Sweden?
Horribly misleading graph. It makes it look like the US is super-popular when in fact the US simply has a higher positive/negative response rate than other countries. The net positives for each country are actually:
Germany: 23% with 62% responding US: 22% with 79% responding Japan: 18% with 62% responding France: 17% with 61% responding UK: 12% with 64% responding China: 4% with 77% responding Russia: -4% with 77% responding
If we scale that up to a standard 100% baseline we get, in order:
Of "western nations", the US has gone up from "awful" to "below the middle of the pack". Of course people clearly prefer the US to Russia and China, which nobody should find as a shock.
On your second point, I have yet to meet a non-feminist who doesn't consider this a blatant attempt to destroy a random guy's life for embarrassing the US government.
Which is really, really sad. "Famous person we like accused of rape" automatically equals "accusers are liars". It's bad enough to have anyone treat you as a liar in a rape case, which is something that always happens. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be in the crosshairs of Assange's millions of followers worldwide.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The UK lower court found, and the high court upheld, that all four counts would be illegal even under *British* law. And the accusations aren't at all like you present them.
The allegations centre on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. One of the women, named in court as Miss A, told police that she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden, and let him stay in her flat because she was due to be away. She returned early, on Friday 13 August, after which the pair went for a meal and then returned to her flat.
Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.
According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.
When he was later interviewed by police in Stockholm, Assange agreed that he had had sex with Miss A but said he did not tear the condom, and that he was not aware that it had been torn. He told police that he had continued to sleep in Miss A's bed for the following week and she had never mentioned a torn condom.
On the following morning, Saturday 14 August, Assange spoke at a seminar organised by Miss A. A second woman, Miss W, had contacted Miss A to ask if she could attend. Both women joined Assange, the co-ordinator of the Swedish WikiLeaks group, whom we will call "Harold", and a few others for lunch.
Assange left the lunch with Miss W. She told the police she and Assange had visited the place where she worked and had then gone to a cinema where they had moved to the back row. He had kissed her and put his hands inside her clothing, she said.
That evening, Miss A held a party at her flat. One of her friends, "Monica", later told police that during the party Miss A had told her about the ripped condom and unprotected sex. Another friend told police that during the evening Miss A told her she had had "the worst sex ever" with Assange: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."
Assange's supporters point out that, despite her complaints against him, Miss A held a party for him on that evening and continued to allow him to stay in her flat.
On Sunday 15 August, Monica told police, Miss A told her that she thought Assange had torn the condom on purpose. According to Monica, Miss A said Assange was still staying in her flat but they were not having sex because he had "exceeded the limits of what she felt she could accept" and she did not feel safe.
The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".
Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and
If you believe what you wrote, then I assume you also believe that the military should stop pushing the BS about how accurate it is and how well it can tell civilians from militants, and openly admit that it can't tell the difference between things like a camera and an RPG from firing range and will quite readily mow down anyone who they can't tell whether is a threat or not?
Do you not also think that for civilians to know whether they want to endorse military action, they need to know this, and to be able to see what war is actually like than the sanitized, sterile picture presented?
While I think Assange is an arse who's simply trying to avoid jail for crimes unrelated to his political activity, I think that in this sort of regard, Wikileaks has done a lot of good.
While we're far from "nothing but ice and all" up here, I've never seen a tennis court here. Oh, I'm sure they exist (I'm not a "gym" person), but just saying, it's far from a ubiquitous sport. Now, handball...
It's actually rather rare that people eat whale here. It's probably fair to say that most people *have* eaten it, but almost nobody eats it regularly. A surprisingly high percent is sold to tourists. And anyway, as a vegetarian, I think the *entire* meat industry is disgusting and immoral.
No jobs? Iceland has a lower unemployment rate than the US. Away from everything? Perhaps *immediately* away from everything but it's a nice, convenient halfway point between North America and Europe, increasing travel options. Expensive? On the upper end, but not ridiculously so (we're only the 8th most expensive cost of living in Europe). Some things are surprisingly cheap over here compared to America, like utilities and (excellent) dairy products.
So is your argument that because the US government has done crappy stuff in the past, that anyone the US government doesn't like should get a get-out-of-jail-card "just in case" and not have to stand trial even for serious charges?
Strange choice of spelling of Björk. It's not even a transliteration designed to get the pronunciation right; that'd be something like "Byerk". And if you wanted to have English cursing written in Icelandic, the correct way to write it would be "fökk". A word that's used not so rarely by Icelanders;)
Don't know who "we" and "you" are in this post, but Iceland is awesome. Freaking beautiful landscape, freaking beautiful skyscapes, super-creative population, great food, no summer heat, surprisingly mild winters (warmer than NYC, for example), virtually no pollution, great infrastructure compared to the population density, virtually no crowds, awesome music and party scene, a well educated and generally non-bigoted populace, clean energy, abundant volcanic hot water delivered straight to the home, etc. I love my adoptive country.:)
Judging from the US embassy here, you'd think the US already did;) It's the most paranoid place in the country. Concrete barriers in the front, armed security guards (even *pepper spray* is illegal here, the police don't even carry it**), etc. You could take all the pictures you want with a telephoto lens of any Icelandic government building, coast guard ships, etc, but if you snap a cell phone camera picture on the same street of the embassy and don't hightail it out of there, you'll be approached by the guards and they won't be happy. The embassy got in trouble about six months back for spying on all the homes and businesses in a several block radius.
As for the concept of a Wikileaks person being in parliament, don't be shocked. Members of the Al(th)ing are mostly pretty walk-of-life people. Everyone here is connected anyway and it's all pretty casual. On 1st may, for example, I walked right into a Samfylkingin meeting from off the street and sat down a couple tables over from the prime minister (could have sat closer if I wanted to). And there were little kids running around in the room playing. People take "celebrity" and "status" in stride. The joke here is, what does an Icelander do if he sees someone famous on the street? He walks up to them and asks them if they wants *his* autograph.;)
Oh, and Slashdot? It's not 1992; implement proper unicode support already so that I can type a proper thorn.
** - Not only is pepper spray illegal, but tear gas has been used just twice in the history of the country. And people here talk about it like using it was the greatest war crime imaginable;)
Reflection is not due to attraction. The incoming light induces a corresponding oscillation in the electrons of what it's striking which is re-radiated. As for black holes, gravity bends space itself. The light is traveling in a straight line, but space is curved.
Photons are massless and don't interact with the Higgs field. In fact, it's the opposite of æther theory - almost everything *but* light (and a few other particles) interacts with it;)
Now we just need to solve gravity, dark matter, dark energy, unify quantum chromodynamics with relativity, and a ton of other stuff.
Party's not over, folks.:)
I suspect dark matter will be easiest. Wouldn't be surprised at all if the LHC solves that one. All you need to see is what looks like a clear violation of conservation of energy/momentum at a consistant, high energy in your results, and you've got evidence that something heavy that interacts weakly or not at all with normal matter is flying off in the opposite direction. That something would probably be dark matter.
The others... that's probably going to be a long, hard slog.
I read huge amount of texts every day for a living, so you can kindly shove Morton's Demon up your arse.
If there's ever more a clear-cut case of "Morton's Demon", it's "I googled to verify my preconceived notion but never even bothered to google the most trivial of counterexamples". Aka, what you did.
Yes, the OP used the word "extradition", but also said that the US wants to "secretly extradite" Assange from Sweden
Hence the article about the British secretly extraditing, rendering, and all sorts of other nasty stuff in cooperation (and even sometimes in the lead of) the US. So your point was...?
Suppose a few years ago someone had told you that the CIA maintains a number of secret prisons in sovereign European countries...
Premise: Conspiracies have happened on Earth in the past. Conclusion: Arguably the most high-profile person accused of crimes right now on Earth is about to fall victim to a secret conspiracy in highly visible violation of treaties while the world is watching, and so should not have to stand trial against serious criminal charges like a regular person would. Even though the conspiracy would have made far more sense to have acted long ago.
Sorry, but the logic train missed a few stops there.
Really? Have you never heard of Google? Just to pick one article for you about a few of the many cases the Brits have been involved in: Link . The British are among the world's biggest players in this game.
Swedens involvement is well-known, I googled it before my post.
Ah, here we get to the root of the problem! You are a victim of Morton's Demon. You might want to see to that.
My point was that the OP claimed that Assange would be kidnapped and tortured by the US if he goes to Sweden. I don't think so, but your reply was completely off topic (about extradition, which the OP didn't talk about)
Again, see to your demon. The OP wrote (emphasis mine):
If you're referring to Julian Assange, the US has brought no charges that are really crimes. It was Sweden, which the UK has an extradition treaty with. The UK would extradite if the US brought charges, but the US wants to secretly extradite him, torture him and hold him indefinitely without bringing any charges.
As has the UK, and much more egregiously. Your point? And are you so seriously into conspiracy theories that you think that they're going to "secretly" do anything in blatant violation of international treaties, with someone who's probably the highest profile wanted person on the planet right now? Especially after the Swedish prime minister himself has pointed out that Sweden would need UK permission?
To put it another way: "4. Notwithstanding paragraph 1, a person who has been surrendered pursuant to a European arrest warrant shall not be extradited to a third State without the consent of the competent authority of the Member State which surrendered the person. Such consent shall be given in accordance with the Conventions by which that Member State is bound, as well as with its domestic law."
Aka, it still comes down to whether a British court would approve an extradition request from the US according to British law. So either way it's up to British courts to decide on an extradition request for Assange unless Sweden wants to be blatantly and explicitly in violation of its treaty obligations on one of the highest profile cases out there. The Swedish prime minister has already publicly pointed out that it couldn't extradite Assange to the US if it wanted to without British courts handling the US request according to their own law.
The only difference between Assange being in the UK and Assange being in Sweden is that he doesn't have to stand trial for rape in the UK. Despite all of the bluster to the contrary.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just blown away by the irony of a nation that ran an international network of secret prisons and tortures people lecturing another country on morality.
Given that the British lower court found, and the British upper court confirmed, that they would be in the UK as well? Yes, unless you think the UK is part of Sweden. What part of "breaking the terms of consent", "pinning someone down to try to force sex", "having sex with a sleeping person", and "rubbing genitalia against an unwilling participant" do you think are only applicable to Sweden?
Horribly misleading graph. It makes it look like the US is super-popular when in fact the US simply has a higher positive/negative response rate than other countries. The net positives for each country are actually:
Germany: 23% with 62% responding
US: 22% with 79% responding
Japan: 18% with 62% responding
France: 17% with 61% responding
UK: 12% with 64% responding
China: 4% with 77% responding
Russia: -4% with 77% responding
If we scale that up to a standard 100% baseline we get, in order:
Germany: 37%
Japan: 29%
France: 28%
US: 28%
UK: 19%
China: 5%
Russia: -5%
Of "western nations", the US has gone up from "awful" to "below the middle of the pack". Of course people clearly prefer the US to Russia and China, which nobody should find as a shock.
Which is really, really sad. "Famous person we like accused of rape" automatically equals "accusers are liars". It's bad enough to have anyone treat you as a liar in a rape case, which is something that always happens. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be in the crosshairs of Assange's millions of followers worldwide.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The UK lower court found, and the high court upheld, that all four counts would be illegal even under *British* law. And the accusations aren't at all like you present them.
If you believe what you wrote, then I assume you also believe that the military should stop pushing the BS about how accurate it is and how well it can tell civilians from militants, and openly admit that it can't tell the difference between things like a camera and an RPG from firing range and will quite readily mow down anyone who they can't tell whether is a threat or not?
Do you not also think that for civilians to know whether they want to endorse military action, they need to know this, and to be able to see what war is actually like than the sanitized, sterile picture presented?
While I think Assange is an arse who's simply trying to avoid jail for crimes unrelated to his political activity, I think that in this sort of regard, Wikileaks has done a lot of good.
Maybe, maybe not...
Yep. Standing always with the victims of rape, unless the alleged perpetrator is Julian Assange.
While we're far from "nothing but ice and all" up here, I've never seen a tennis court here. Oh, I'm sure they exist (I'm not a "gym" person), but just saying, it's far from a ubiquitous sport. Now, handball...
It's actually rather rare that people eat whale here. It's probably fair to say that most people *have* eaten it, but almost nobody eats it regularly. A surprisingly high percent is sold to tourists. And anyway, as a vegetarian, I think the *entire* meat industry is disgusting and immoral.
No jobs? Iceland has a lower unemployment rate than the US. Away from everything? Perhaps *immediately* away from everything but it's a nice, convenient halfway point between North America and Europe, increasing travel options. Expensive? On the upper end, but not ridiculously so (we're only the 8th most expensive cost of living in Europe). Some things are surprisingly cheap over here compared to America, like utilities and (excellent) dairy products.
So is your argument that because the US government has done crappy stuff in the past, that anyone the US government doesn't like should get a get-out-of-jail-card "just in case" and not have to stand trial even for serious charges?
Strange choice of spelling of Björk. It's not even a transliteration designed to get the pronunciation right; that'd be something like "Byerk". And if you wanted to have English cursing written in Icelandic, the correct way to write it would be "fökk". A word that's used not so rarely by Icelanders ;)
Don't know who "we" and "you" are in this post, but Iceland is awesome. Freaking beautiful landscape, freaking beautiful skyscapes, super-creative population, great food, no summer heat, surprisingly mild winters (warmer than NYC, for example), virtually no pollution, great infrastructure compared to the population density, virtually no crowds, awesome music and party scene, a well educated and generally non-bigoted populace, clean energy, abundant volcanic hot water delivered straight to the home, etc. I love my adoptive country. :)
Judging from the US embassy here, you'd think the US already did ;) It's the most paranoid place in the country. Concrete barriers in the front, armed security guards (even *pepper spray* is illegal here, the police don't even carry it**), etc. You could take all the pictures you want with a telephoto lens of any Icelandic government building, coast guard ships, etc, but if you snap a cell phone camera picture on the same street of the embassy and don't hightail it out of there, you'll be approached by the guards and they won't be happy. The embassy got in trouble about six months back for spying on all the homes and businesses in a several block radius.
As for the concept of a Wikileaks person being in parliament, don't be shocked. Members of the Al(th)ing are mostly pretty walk-of-life people. Everyone here is connected anyway and it's all pretty casual. On 1st may, for example, I walked right into a Samfylkingin meeting from off the street and sat down a couple tables over from the prime minister (could have sat closer if I wanted to). And there were little kids running around in the room playing. People take "celebrity" and "status" in stride. The joke here is, what does an Icelander do if he sees someone famous on the street? He walks up to them and asks them if they wants *his* autograph. ;)
Oh, and Slashdot? It's not 1992; implement proper unicode support already so that I can type a proper thorn.
** - Not only is pepper spray illegal, but tear gas has been used just twice in the history of the country. And people here talk about it like using it was the greatest war crime imaginable ;)
We're not talking about "describing", but "unifying" and "simplifying". We can describe mass and energy without the Higgs field.
Reflection is not due to attraction. The incoming light induces a corresponding oscillation in the electrons of what it's striking which is re-radiated. As for black holes, gravity bends space itself. The light is traveling in a straight line, but space is curved.
They blew up chunks of the LHC once already, does that count?
Photons are massless and don't interact with the Higgs field. In fact, it's the opposite of æther theory - almost everything *but* light (and a few other particles) interacts with it ;)
Now we just need to solve gravity, dark matter, dark energy, unify quantum chromodynamics with relativity, and a ton of other stuff.
Party's not over, folks. :)
I suspect dark matter will be easiest. Wouldn't be surprised at all if the LHC solves that one. All you need to see is what looks like a clear violation of conservation of energy/momentum at a consistant, high energy in your results, and you've got evidence that something heavy that interacts weakly or not at all with normal matter is flying off in the opposite direction. That something would probably be dark matter.
The others... that's probably going to be a long, hard slog.
Laplace's Demon
If there's ever more a clear-cut case of "Morton's Demon", it's "I googled to verify my preconceived notion but never even bothered to google the most trivial of counterexamples". Aka, what you did.
Hence the article about the British secretly extraditing, rendering, and all sorts of other nasty stuff in cooperation (and even sometimes in the lead of) the US. So your point was...?
Premise: Conspiracies have happened on Earth in the past.
Conclusion: Arguably the most high-profile person accused of crimes right now on Earth is about to fall victim to a secret conspiracy in highly visible violation of treaties while the world is watching, and so should not have to stand trial against serious criminal charges like a regular person would. Even though the conspiracy would have made far more sense to have acted long ago.
Sorry, but the logic train missed a few stops there.
Really? Have you never heard of Google? Just to pick one article for you about a few of the many cases the Brits have been involved in: Link . The British are among the world's biggest players in this game.
Ah, here we get to the root of the problem! You are a victim of Morton's Demon. You might want to see to that.
Again, see to your demon. The OP wrote (emphasis mine):
Hopefully you can see the boldfaced words.
Let me know when you're done with the exorcism.
As has the UK, and much more egregiously. Your point? And are you so seriously into conspiracy theories that you think that they're going to "secretly" do anything in blatant violation of international treaties, with someone who's probably the highest profile wanted person on the planet right now? Especially after the Swedish prime minister himself has pointed out that Sweden would need UK permission?
To put it another way: "4. Notwithstanding paragraph 1, a person who has been surrendered pursuant to a European arrest warrant shall not be extradited to a third State without the consent of the competent authority of the Member State which surrendered the person. Such consent shall be given in accordance with the Conventions by which that Member State is bound, as well as with its domestic law."
Aka, it still comes down to whether a British court would approve an extradition request from the US according to British law. So either way it's up to British courts to decide on an extradition request for Assange unless Sweden wants to be blatantly and explicitly in violation of its treaty obligations on one of the highest profile cases out there. The Swedish prime minister has already publicly pointed out that it couldn't extradite Assange to the US if it wanted to without British courts handling the US request according to their own law.
The only difference between Assange being in the UK and Assange being in Sweden is that he doesn't have to stand trial for rape in the UK. Despite all of the bluster to the contrary.